Battle Report 33 - Nanorush!

Tyranids vs. Salamanders

Composed by Michael J. Casavant (Hive Fleet Phage)

Summary

• Date - 04NOV2002
• Points - 1700
• Scenario - Blitz
• Hive Fleet Phage, Tyranid Army List [played by Michael J. Casavant]
• Salamanders [played by Cliff Maxwell]
• Result - Victory for Tyranid
• Battle Honours
  • Hive Fleet Phage - didn't bother (read on).
  • Food - ?

Report

Intro

Firmus Mutare Campaign, game twelve. Here I was defending against the Salamanders. Only my second Blitz mission, I was a Defender on this one because Cliff was attacking one of my territories. This ended up being my last game in the campaign for a variety of reasons, the biggest being to shake things up in the game and make them more interesting by ending my army's stranglehold on almost every territory with a high point value and/or cool ability. I was fighting a minimum of 3 battles a turn and I am burning out.

Naming convention: The food that have faced Hive Fleet Phage have named the Hive Tyrants that continue to plague them. The one that trudges forward implacably with an escort of Tyrant Guard they call "Thunder." The swift winged beast that races across the battlefield and shatters bodies and vehicles alike has been dubbed "Lightning." They have also named the Carnifex engine of destruction, "Mjolnir".

The Battle

OK, I got an e-mail asking for more pictures last night, so I took a few more pictures, now stop bugging me! :)

Simply put, we attacked each other and stuff died. Cliff's Chaplain on Bike was the MVP by far. He was "suffering" from the effects of Corruption, a campaign rule that gives him a 6+ Invulnerable save and two free re-rolls. Cliff did not choose this; rather, it was forced on him by a die roll. In the end, he was happy with it as it allowed his Chaplain to survive two full turns (yes turns, not phases) longer while a mass of Lysogaunts tried to tear him to pieces.

Setup. Lots of bugs quietly waiting in their defensive positions.

I had just finished painting, sealing, and putting wings on my Flying Hive Tyrant (see the gritty details here). Here he is next to some of the few others that have actually been painted. Nothing special about this scene, just liking the way my new bug looks. :)

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you. It's marines charging fortifications to assault bugs. You may never see this again. Oh yes, they did flame the heck out of the bugs first, of course.

Wrap-up

Thanks go to Cliff for the game. Not surprisingly, trying to Blitz through bugs is a recipe for getting killed efficiently.

Cliff had a good idea and used Deepstrike to put his unit of Terminators behind my lines. It did delay the arrival of three units to the main fight, but they may have been better off landing well behind my lines to take advantage of the bonus VPs for being in the latter third of the board and it may have drawn more of my guys away from the fight.

Cliff feels that the Biovore spore mine firing should be taken literally from the Tyranid Codex. The mine is placed on the table (literally, so not on a model), then the scatter dice are rolled. If they scatter, the spore mine moves in that direction, as opposed to being relocated, like a typical template. This has the effect of increasing the likelihood of a spore mine going off the phase it is fired, which is nice, and it does follow the same process used for spore mine Preliminary Bombardment. Interesting idea.